As a result of digitization in the health service, more data is being acquired and made available for each individual patient. However, these large datasets are distributed between different data sources in different institutions (such as hospitals, medical insurance companies or medical practices) and therefore it is not possible, or very difficult, to utilize any synergistic effects obtainable from the combination of numerous datasets.
Storage of data relating to a patient in an electronic health record (“electronic health record” is an English technical term, “EHR” for short) is known. On the one hand, an EHR is usually only a collection of data items that are difficult or impossible to link with another. On the other hand, an electronic health record of this kind has to be stored synchronously by different institutions while observing data protection.